Horse Head Confreres

"Dedman looked up at him
with a benign flicker of the long curling eyelashes that gave his gaze a starry expectancy. He spoke with his lips hardly moving. 'Go chop some horsemeat,' he said.

Miss Appleton seemed rather flustered and out of breath, probably from the long climb. 'Peter, translate,' she said, and then she read aloud with her impeccable quantities,

' Dixit, et avertens rosea cervice refulsit,

ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem

spiravere, pedes vestis defluxit ad imos,

et vera incessu patuit dea. '

As she made these words ring, she wore her Latin face: corners of the lips sternly downdrawn, eyebrows lifted rigidly, her cheeks gray with gravity. In French class, her face was quite different: cheeks like apples, eyebrows dancing, mouth puckered dryly, corners tense naughtily.

'She said,' I said.
'She spoke, and ... and ... glowed.'
'What glowed? Not she glowed. Cervice glowed.'
'She spoke, and, turning, her, uh, rosy crevice --' Laughter from the others. I blushed.
'No! Cervice, cervice. Neck. You've heard of the cervix. Surely you've heard of the cervical vertebrae.
'She spoke, and, turning---'

'As she turned.'

'As she turned, her rosy neck blushed.'

'Very well.'

'And, and coma, coma --sleep?'

'Hair, Peter, hair. Surely you've heard of the derivative word comose? Think of comb, as a rooster's comb.'

'And, uh, turning again--'

'Oh no. Dear child, no. Vertice here is the noun, vertex, verticis. Vortex. A vortex, a whirl, a crown of hair, of what kind of hair? What agrees?'

'Ambrosial.'

'Yes, ambrosial meaning, properly, immortal. Applied most often to the food of the gods, and in that sense descending to us with the meaning of sweet, delicious, honey-like. But the gods also used ambrosia for anointment and perfume.' She spoke of the gods with a certain authority, Miss Appleton did.
'And her whirl, her tangle--'
'Crown, Peter. The hair of the gods is never tangled.'

'And her crown of ambrosial hair breathed out a divine odor.'

'Yes. Good. Fragrance, let's say. Odor rather suggests plumbing.'

'...a divine fragrance, her vestment, her robe...'

'Yes., a flowing robe. All the goddesses save Diana wore a loose flowing robe. Diana, the heavenly huntress, wore of course a sensible tunic, perhaps with leggings, probably of a heavy green or brown cloth such as what I am wearing. Her robe flowed down--" (183-4).